Backup and restore technologies often protect both physical and virtual computing environments. In one example, a backup and restore technology may back up a physical disk in a format that is native to a physical environment. For example, a backup and restore technology may back up a physical disk in a Globally Unique Identifier Partition Table (GPT) format that is native to a physical server. In the event that the physical disk experiences a failure, the backup and restore technology may restore the physical disk from the GPT-formatted backup.
In another example, the backup and restore technology may back up a virtual disk in a format that is native to a virtual environment. For example, a backup and restore technology may back up a virtual disk in a Master Boot Record (MBR) format that is native to a virtual environment running on a host server. In the event that the virtual disk or environment experiences a failure, the backup and restore technology may restore the virtual disk from the MBR-formatted backup.
Unfortunately, some virtual environments may be unable to mount non-natively formatted disks (such as GPT-formatted disks) outside of guest machines. As a result, while conventional backup and restore technologies may protect physical and virtual environments in the ways described above, such backup and restore technologies may still have certain shortcomings and/or limitations. For example, a conventional backup and restore technology may be unable to use a GPT-formatted backup to restore individual items (such as individual emails, files, and/or folders) via a virtual environment that does not support mounting GPT-formatted disks outside of guest machines. In another example, the conventional backup and restore technology may be unable to perform a physical-to-virtual (P2V) conversion on the GPT-formatted backup since the virtual environment does not support mounting GPT-formatted disks outside of guest machines.
What is needed, therefore, are systems and methods for enabling virtual environments to mount non-natively formatted disks outside of guest machines.